Sean O'Connor's Games

Custom Ships

Custom Ships

BRL-08 Zip
Originally designed by Major Redd Barrel (KIA), who was not content with the dogfighting ships available, designed the Zip as a cheap, flexible fighter for use by squad leaders.

Major Barrel was killed by friendly fire before his designs could be put into production, but the Zip soon became the workhorse of entry-level Ryckurn squadrons. Only minor modifications have been made to the ship since its design, trading out its original Drachans in favor a rack of Plectrons. Plans for the ship's design have since fallen into enemy hands, and the Zip can be seen being used by all four armies.

EGT-01 Neith
Advances in Ryckurn ship-building techniques have gone a long way in protecting their pilots from their roots, and the EGT-01 is a testament to that. The road to this ship's design, however, was not a simple one.

Multi-cockpitted ships have been experimented with by Ryckurn scientists for many years. However, most designs attempted to do this with more than one pilot. It was not until a few years ago that anyone attempted to create a large cockpit for a single pilot. The first man to attempt to do this was Professor Atum, a former pilot who was forcibly retired after losing his left arm in an escape pod misfire.

Atum's early trials were less than successful. Most ship designs ended with the test pilots dying of radiation poisoning from the reactors, crashing due to control failure, or, on rare occasions, exploding violently. (One design that ended in the Critical Mass engines imploding and creating a small black hole is currently being redeveloped by the weapon-labs as a Xenocide-Class Planetbuster.)

Atum's first successful design was the EGT-01 Neith. Named after an Egyptian goddess of War, the Neith has been designed as a long-ranged fighter, with moderate ship-to-ship capabilities. It remains relatively untested, but early reports are good. Only time will tell if these ships have been worth the time and money put into developing them.

(Thought I could just throw the picture and file into a topic and post it, but what fun is that?)

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 4:22 pm

by Legacy

I sort of have a background to my CM story, but now I've installed CM on a second machine, and have an entire separate family of ships on that one, so I need to develop a second storyline or something.

Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 1:27 am

by Sketchy

All this is my personal opinion only, so please don't be offended by any of it. It's actually quite a testament to the design and balance of CM that people can enjoy and find success using very different styles of ship.

Graphics:
The general shape is good. It doesn't look out of place alongside the original CM ships, and there's plenty of scope for creating more ships in the same "family".
I think you should work on making it look more 3-dimensional - at the moment it is very flat.

Design:
I'm really not sure about the design. It just doesn't seem very cost effective to me.
I think it's a waste of 4pts having 3 different types of missiles - you could lose the Geenees and replace them with another set each of Plectrons and Daycorns, and it would only cost 1pt more.
The shields are very heavy which is fine, although I think 8pts is a lot to pay for a rear shield on such a cheap ship (and especially one so capable of turning to avoid taking hits to the rear).
I also wouldn't bother with Repair Bots on a ship with heavy shields and only 2 command centres - they're most effective when combined with extra command centres, as an alternative to shields (effectively providing you with regenerative shields). With just 2 command centres, there's a good chance you'll be dead by the time you take enough damage to be worth repairing.

Performance:
To my surprise, the first two missions I tested it, I got two Gold Crosses, so that was a good start.
Certainly, its turning ability is outstanding - especially compared to my own designs. Racking up the kills is very easy (staying alive less so).
However, at 100pts and only 15 missiles, I think it's a wingman ship rather than one you might want to fly yourself on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, it didn't fair too well under AI control. It died very easily, and made little contribution even when it did survive - rarely managing more than two or three hits in a mission. Also, its limited scanner range means it won't be a lot of help on those "destroy coloniser" missions.

Still, overall I think it's a good ship for the earlier missions in the game.

Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 2:16 pm

by JoystickHero

Counterargument:The rear shield is actually a defense against the only missile I cannot effectively dodge, the Orik. The missile idea, though, is a very good point. I may consider changing that to either 10 Plectrons and 10 Daycorns, (28 points), or 20, 25, or 30 Geenees (24 Points, 29 Points, and 34 Points, respectively).

The bots were a decision for a similar reason, more for personal preference and survivability than cost-effectiveness. The radar's also lacking a bit, I'll admit that.

However, to give any kind of major change to this ship would essentally rob it of what it is, so I will simply keep your constructive criticism in mind for my next design. Thank you very much. :3

As for the appearance, that's not something I'm very good at, but I shall try.

News
Yesterday, I was having some trouble with my computer, and thus had to do a System Restore. I lost almost all of my ship designs. D: